mindate exists for one reason: to help adults form genuine, considered connections with people they're actually compatible with — not the people with the best lighting.
These guidelines describe the kind of community we want mindate to be, and the small set of behaviours we will not tolerate. By using mindate you agree to follow them. They sit alongside our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
If you'd rather skim than read: be honest, be kind, be safe, keep it on the app, and tell us if something feels off.
1. Be Yourself
The whole product is built around the idea that we know who you really are.
- Real name. Use the name people call you in real life.
- Real you in the photos. Recent, in-focus, not heavily filtered. The Liveness check at sign-up creates a private mathematical "fingerprint" of your face on your device. Every photo you upload is checked against that fingerprint so that the photos genuinely show the person who joined. If they don't match, the photo is rejected. (More on what we store and what we don't is in our Privacy Policy, Section 4.)
- No impersonation. Don't pretend to be someone else — celebrity, stranger, an ex, a fictional character, an AI persona — ever. Detected impersonation is a permanent ban with no appeal.
- Honest answers. The 20 mandatory onboarding questions drive the matches you'll be shown. Answering strategically rather than truthfully will only get you matched with people you don't actually align with.
2. Be Kind
Every account belongs to a real person who paused their evening to read your message.
- No hate speech. Anything that attacks, demeans or incites violence against a person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age or any other protected characteristic is out.
- No harassment, bullying or intimidation. "No" is a complete sentence. If someone isn't interested, leave the conversation.
- No discrimination. Treat everyone with the same baseline respect.
- Be kind in goodbye. Not every chat ends in romance. If you're done, use Not for me rather than sending something cruel.
3. Be Safe — and Keep Each Other Safe
- No threats of violence, harm or self-harm against another person. Threats will be removed and may be reported to UK police.
- No doxxing. Don't share another user's real name, address, workplace, phone number, social handles, family members or any other identifying details without their explicit consent.
- Be cautious about personal info. Phone numbers, addresses, banking, ID documents — these belong to you. Share only when you feel ready.
- Never send money. If a match asks for money, gift cards, crypto, an "investment opportunity", or anything that smells like a romance scam — even after weeks of conversation — report them. Romance fraud is the single biggest harm in online dating.
- First conversations stay on mindate. Asking for someone's WhatsApp, Snapchat or Telegram in the first few messages is a recognised grooming and scam pattern. Get to know each other on mindate first; you can always swap details later if it feels right.
4. Photos
Your photos stay private and blurred to a match until you've exchanged 20 meaningful messages with them — that's a deliberate product choice, not an accident. While you're choosing what to upload, please follow these rules:
- It's actually you. The face must match the face you used to sign up.
- Clothed. No nudity, no intimate exposure, no sexually suggestive framing. Apple's on-device sensitivity scanner catches most of these before they ever leave your phone.
- No one else's face front and centre. Group photos with friends are fine; a photo whose subject is plainly someone else is not.
- No children other than your own — and only with care. A photo where your own child appears incidentally and clothed may be acceptable. A photo focused on a child, posed sexually, or used to imply availability of a child for any reason will be reported to the National Crime Agency / IWF and your account will be permanently banned and reported to the police.
- No screenshots, memes, or cartoons as your only photos. We're trying to help you meet a human.
5. Conversation Standards
- Be present. Reply when you can. If life intervenes, our Ghost Escape feature lets you exit a stalled chat with a polite system message — use it instead of disappearing.
- Profanity tolerance. Mild profanity in casual conversation is fine. Moderate profanity directed at someone earns a warning. Slurs, severe profanity or sexually graphic language without consent are blocked outright by the message filter. (We use a graded 820-word list across mild / moderate / severe.)
- No unsolicited sexual content. Sending unsolicited intimate images is cyberflashing, a criminal offence under the Online Safety Act 2023. Don't do it on mindate; don't do it anywhere.
- No spam, ads, MLM, crypto pumps or solicitation. mindate is a place to meet people, not a place to recruit them.
- No bots, no automation. Every account must be operated by the human it belongs to.
6. Safety Tools — What They Do
| Tool | What it does | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Not for me | Silently removes the match. The other person is not told. | When something just isn't a fit. |
| Block | Removes the match and prevents any future contact. | When you no longer want to interact with someone. |
| Block & Report | Same as Block, plus sends the conversation to our moderation team with a reason code. | When someone has done something that breaks these guidelines or scares you. |
| Ghost Escape | Closes a stalled chat with a graceful system message. | When you don't want to reply but want to be polite. |
| Life Pause | Hides your profile and pauses notifications for up to 30 days. | When you need a break. |
7. What Happens When You Report
- You tap Report, choose a reason code and (optionally) add a note.
- The conversation, the reported user's profile, our profanity-filter logs and our grooming-detection scores are bundled for review.
- Our team reviews each report. We aim to action all reports within 30 days; high-severity reports (threats, sexual exploitation, suspected minors) are triaged within 24 hours.
- We may issue a warning, restrict features, suspend, or permanently ban the reported account.
- You will not be identified to the person you reported. We won't normally tell you the outcome of an individual report, but we will respond to follow-ups about your own account.
- Bad-faith reporting (filing fake reports to harass another user) is itself a serious breach.
For anything we believe is illegal (CSAM, credible threats of violence, fraud, romance scams operated at scale) we will report directly to the relevant UK authority — the Internet Watch Foundation, the National Crime Agency, or local police — and cooperate with their investigation.
8. Consequences — How We Decide
We use a graduated approach.
| Severity | Examples | Likely outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Minor | One-off mild profanity directed at a match; a borderline photo. | Warning. Photo or message removed. |
| Moderate | Repeated mild breaches; aggressive language; trying to move first-contact off-platform. | Warning + temporary feature restriction (e.g. messaging cooldown). |
| Serious | Persistent harassment; repeat moderate breaches; a single severe slur. | Temporary suspension (typically 7-30 days). |
| Severe | Threats, doxxing, cyberflashing, hate speech, scam patterns, impersonation, attempted Liveness fraud. | Permanent ban. |
| Illegal | CSAM, credible threats of violence, romance fraud, serious sexual offences. | Permanent ban + report to UK law enforcement / IWF / NCA. |
We take account of context, history and the harm caused. A first-time mistake by an otherwise good user is treated differently from a repeat pattern.
9. Appeals
Bans and suspensions can be appealed.
- How: email appeals@mindate.app from the address linked to your Apple ID.
- Include: what happened, why you believe the decision was wrong, anything we should know.
- Who reviews: a person who was not involved in the original decision.
- Timeline: we aim to reply within 14 days.
- Outcome: we may overturn, vary or uphold the original decision. If we uphold, that decision is final at the platform level — you of course retain any statutory right of complaint to a regulator or court.
We will not consider appeals for the most severe categories (CSAM, sexual exploitation, threats of violence, attempts to defeat the Liveness check).
10. Reporting Illegal Content Directly
If you encounter something that you believe is a criminal offence and you want to report it outside mindate:
- Suspected child sexual abuse imagery: Internet Watch Foundation — iwf.org.uk/report
- Online child exploitation: CEOP — ceop.police.uk
- Romance fraud / online scams: Action Fraud — actionfraud.police.uk • 0300 123 2040
- Immediate danger: dial 999.
You can (and we hope you will) also report it to mindate so that we can act on the account.
11. Why We Do It This Way
A lot of dating apps optimise for swipes. mindate optimises for conversations that go somewhere. The hidden-photo unlock, the Wavelength scoring, the Liveness check, the message-quality threshold, the Life Pause and the graduated moderation ladder are all there to make this a place where attention is rewarded rather than rationed.
These guidelines aren't a list of rules invented to restrict you. They're the social contract that lets the design work. If you'd like to suggest improvements, we'd genuinely love to hear from you at feedback@mindate.app.
12. Contact
- General support: support@mindate.app
- Appeals: appeals@mindate.app
- Privacy / data rights: privacy@mindate.app
- Operator: RoDee Studio, registered in England and Wales
These Community Guidelines were last updated on 16 April 2026.